Right now, I’m seeing a lot of people say that the COVID-19 crisis proves that Trump was right in his controversial policies to shut down the borders. I’m seeing it in enough different places that it’s clearly become a talking point getting repeated as a truism in pro-Trump media and communities. It’s a really interesting argument because many people think it’s a clobber argument—one that should end the argument. But critics of Trump don’t find it all that persuasive. Why not?
There are a lot of reasons, including that some people won’t grant Trump credit for anything (just as there are Trump supporters who won’t acknowledge any criticism of him)—that’s just rabid factionalism.
Another reason has to do with how people think about politics (and lots of other things). Many people reason associatively. There’s a famous quiz for testing thinking processes that has questions like this:
There is a group of women, 30% of whom are librarians, and 70% of whom are nurses. Mary is one of those women, and she is 35. What are the chances that she is a librarian?
A. 10-40%
B. 40-60%
C. 60-80%
D. 80-100%
A fair number of people will pick 30%.
If the example is:
There is a group of women, 30% of whom are librarians, and 70% of whom are nurses. Mary is one of those women, and she is 35 and wears glasses. What are the chances that she is a librarian?
A. 10-40%
B. 40-60%
C. 60-80%
D. 80-100%
Under those circumstances, a fair number of people will pick a higher percentage, as though the added detail “wears glasses” changes the chances of her being a librarian. But, that detail doesn’t change the chances—there are, as far as I know, no studies showing that librarians are more likely to wear glasses than nurses. Wearing glasses is something we associate with librarians, largely because of movies and TV. It isn’t logically related, but associatively.
Another example of that kind of thinking is to ask one group of people how many calories a meal has, such as a meal consisting of 6 ounces of poached chicken breast and 1 cup of rice, and to ask another group of people about the calories of a meal consisting of 6 ounces of poached chicken breast, 1 cup of rice, and a salad (4 ounces mixed green lettuces, 3 cherry tomatoes, and 1 tablespoon oil and vinegar dressing). A lot of people will give the meal with the salad fewer calories than the one without. (Sometimes even the same people will give the meal with the salad fewer calories than the one without.)
Of course, the meal with the salad has more calories, but people think it doesn’t because salads are associated with healthy food, and healthy eating is associated with consuming fewer calories.
A few years ago, I had a funny conversation with someone about McDonald’s—they said that they got the fried chicken sandwiches rather than any of the hamburgers (even though they liked the hamburgers more) because it had fewer calories than any of the hamburgers. Actually, it doesn’t. Again, it’s a question of association—chicken is associated with healthy food, and so this person was simply assuming that chicken sandwiches had fewer calories. I had a similar conversation with someone who bragged that she didn’t let her children drink milk for health reasons; she gave them fruit juice instead.
I once lived somewhere that, several years before, had had a series of burglaries that took place in the middle of the day, while people were away at work. Several of the neighbors responded by leaving very bright outdoor lights on all night, and that’s an interesting response. It wasn’t going to make any difference as far as preventing the burglaries—they happened during the day. But daytime burglaries are burglaries, and they’re associated with danger. And leaving lights on during the night is associated with safety, with safety against a different kind of burglary, but one that’s still associated with daytime burglaries.
So, did the policy of leaving lights on protect those neighbors against the burglars who were active in the neighborhood? No, but it protected them against something, and so seemed like a good policy.
When we’re frightened, we have a tendency to believe that protecting our borders (physical, biological, ideological) is a good plan, simply because it’s associated with protection—regardless of whether that particular way of protecting our borders will actually prevent the outcome about which we’re frightened. We protect our house against one kind of burglary, but not the one actually threatening us.
Trump’s policies regarding “borders” has as much logical relevance to COVID-19 as leaving lights on all night had for daytime burglaries. Trump’s policies were (and are) about blocking land-based immigration from Mexico and any immigration (or travel) from various Muslim countries. He never did anything about Americans travelling to and from China, and that’s how we got COVID-19. As Jeff Goodell says, “In fact, the travel ban was a failure before it began. “You can’t hermetically seal the United States off from the rest of the world,” Rice says. For one thing, the ban only applied to Chinese citizens, not to Americans coming home from China or other international travelers, or to cargo that was coming into the U.S. from China.”
His rhetoric associated various Others as evil and dangerous, but never in a way that would have kept the US safe from this virus. And, despite what many people who are repeating the talking point about his policies being right seem to think, Trump got his way with his travel bans. They went into effect.
So, this talking point is simply saying that Trump was right to make Americans fearful about our borders, but he didn’t make Americans fearful about borders. He made Americans fearful about Mexicans and Muslims, and now he’s trying to make us fear the Chinese. Viruses don’t have a race, and they don’t see race. Building the wall wouldn’t have prevented COVID-19. His travel ban (which was instituted) didn’t prevent COVID-19. His second travel ban (about which he bragged) was ineffective.
That Trump’s rhetoric is a rhetoric of fear of Others, and that his policies are associated with that fear, doesn’t mean his policies were effective. That two (or more) things are associated in our minds is not actually proof that they are either causally or logically connected. They’re just associated in our mind, and sometimes someone’s rhetoric.